Led By A Limp - Luke Kennedy

Ps Luke Kennedy shared an incredible message on being led by a limp—drawing from Jacob’s wrestle with God in Genesis and connecting it to Romans 8:22–27, where the Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us. 

We pray you’re blessed by this message, and we’d love to see you in person. Our services are every Sunday at 10am—see you there.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi everyone. The best place to hear these messages is together on Sundays. But the second best place is right here. Would really appreciate it if you would subscribe and give us a rating wherever you're listening. If you want to contribute to Future Church and the ministry that's happening here, please jump on to futurechurch.io forward slash give. Enjoy the message.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

How's everyone doing? Good. It's so good to be sharing with you guys. It's been a little while since we uh opened the scripture together. It's been great having some friends share recently in our church. Good to be back sharing. I'm gonna share for the next couple of weeks with you guys. And uh I'm excited. Last time I shared was actually, I think it was about six weeks ago, and I started sharing from Acts about how God leads people, and we talked about how God leads people through waiting. From Acts chapter 2, how God leads us through waiting to hear his voice. And sometimes that's uncomfortable, is to be waiting to hear God's voice. Today I want to continue along that thought, and we're gonna talk about how God leads us through a wrestle and a limp. How God leads us through a limp. Romans chapter 8, one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. If you've been around here, you know this because I talk about it a lot. Romans chapter 8, I was so insecure as a teenager. I came into the church, I came from a very messed-up family, and I was so insecure that I wrote out Romans chapter 8 on the wall of my bedroom on paper. I didn't write on the walls, on the paper, and I stuck it up all around my bedroom. It's a quite a long chapter, and every night I would try to memorize it and memorize just a little bit more until I got to the end for a whole year. This scripture became like an anchor point for my life. It's really about what does it mean to have a new life? The old life is gone, the new life has come. What does it mean to have a new life with Jesus, led by the Spirit of God? It's a different life, it's a new way of thinking, a new way of living and breathing and having your being. And I want to have a look at this quite little strange part in the middle of it, it's in verse 22. It kind of describes some of the people in this room. I feel like it's going to describe for you some of your discontentment. And it's going to describe for you the process that in which God is inviting you into. Okay, so should we read together? Okay, here we go. It says, We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in pains of childbirth right up until the present time. Not only so, but we find ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. We're gonna circle back to this because I know this sounds a little uh deep for a Sunday morning at 10 a.m. Um, for in this hope we were saved. But already have but but English. Um uh but but hope is that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they've already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently in the same way the spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not even know what we ought to pray for, but the spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance to the will of God. Has anyone else in this place felt like I have been saved by God? God has done something in my life, and yet there is so much more to come, and the gap between where I am and where I know I should be is like groaning inside of me. What is going on? God, what is happening in the world today? Maybe you experience this even in your own heart, you experience the gap between what you believe and what you've experienced, or maybe the work of God that He has begun in you, but you know there's so much more to come. Or maybe you experience this by looking at the world around you, and I know there's a lot of creative people in this space, and creative people often feel things very deeply, and you look at the world and you say it is not how it should be. What God is doing in me is not reflected in the way that the world is being run right now, and what's happening in the world today. There's a there's this gap and divide and disconnect in the middle of that. Is anyone else? Are you tracking with me? You feel do you feel this? Okay, this is exactly the place where the spirit of God wants to meet you. In the middle of your discontent and your frustration with what is not yet, God wants to meet you there. The spirit of God is right in the middle of that. We theologians call this the here but not yet kingdom of God. When Jesus rose from the dead, it was the inauguration of a new creation. It talks about Jesus being the firstborn of new humanity, meaning when Jesus rose from the dead, something definitely, definitely changed in the world. It was a new day, there was a new way to be human, there was an invite into a new kingdom, a new humanity, a new family of God. But how many of you also know that that work is not complete yet? And will not be complete until the day that Jesus returns. Did you know that Jesus is going to return? Did you know that? That's not that's not like uh just a story at the end of the He's come in the same way that he came the first time, he is coming back again. And on that day, the Bible says, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess, not because Jesus is there with a sword, forcing people to get on their knees, but the reality of who Jesus is will confront all of humanity. Reality has come, and Jesus really is God, and and and the Bible says that all of humanity's response to that will be oh my gosh, fall on your knees. That will be the response, that will be the appropriate response to that reality. One day that's gonna happen, but we live today, we live in the middle right now. We have new creation, but it's not fully complete yet. And this is the birth of the church, this is where the church lives, this is the call of the church, and what I want to encourage you with is maybe your frustration in the middle of what you've experienced and what is yet to come, that is the place of your calling. What you feel deeply is a place where the Spirit of God is actually leading you right now. God is leading you through your groaning. You don't want to remember groaning? Oh God, what the God? That groaning, God is leading you in it. Right in the middle of it. This is good news, everyone. So, what I want to invite you into is what I would call a wrestle with God. A wrestle with God. Um, in the in the book of Genesis, there's a story about a man. His name is Jacob, and he has this wrestle with God in Genesis chapter 32, verse 22. Um, this man, Jacob, he has a promise from God about his family blessing the whole world and God using his life to bless the whole world. It's kind of a big vision. Yet his character is severely flawed. Anyone else relate to that? Character is severely flawed. He's a schemer, he's a deceiver, we would say he's a grifter. He's someone who is, his name literally means heel grabber. When someone's ahead of him, he likes, you know, what's that when you, you know, he's an ankle tapper. In the 100-meter race, he's the guy that does the ankle tap so he can win. That's him. He's a trickster, he's a fraudster. That's who he's been, but he's gonna have an encounter with God and he's gonna wrestle with God to a place where his whole identity is about to change. And this is the wrestle, the groan that God would invite us into as well, I believe. That night Jacob got up and took his two wives. That's his first problem right there. Okay, one wife, just one, okay, and by the way, boy, just choose one. Okay, go after it, don't be passive. You know, there's lots of great girls in this church. Come on. That night, Jacob um took his two wives. Okay, we said that. His two, his two female servants. Again, this guy's got problems, and even his sons crossed over, okay? This is this is this is a recounting of history. This is not instruction, everyone. This is recounting this guy's problems. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all of his possessions, and Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. The man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched his socket of his hip, so that his hip was basically wrecked, was wrenched as Jacob wrestled with the man. Then the man said, Let me go, for it is daybreak. But Jacob replied, I will not go, I will not um let you go unless you bless me. And the man asked, What's your name? What is your name? And he said, Jacob. He answered, and the man said to him, Your name will no longer be Jacob but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans, and you have overcome. And Jacob said, Please tell me your name. But he replied, Why are you asking my name? Then he blessed him there, and Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, It is because I which means seeing God face to face, because he had seen God face to face, and yet his life had been spared. The sun rose above him as he passed Pinail, and he was limping because of his hip. He was limping because of his hip. So he meets with God. This figure in the Bible is sometimes called the angel of the Lord. Some theologians would say that this could be Jesus, um, the angel of the Lord, a messenger from God. But what he's responded is is he he sees it as he accepts it as this is God. I'm meeting with God. And this experience changes him so deeply that it even changes his name and his identity. He goes in there and he he comes out a different way. Let me tell you about fighting with God. I used to do jujitsu, right? Some people here actually do jujitsu and they're good, so you don't want to fight them. I used to do jujitsu just for a little bit because my son does jujitsu and I couldn't have my nine-year-old son beating me up because that's embarrassing. So I had to dominate him just for a little bit while I could, and now he's 13, and you know, it's getting to that point where it's it's getting real, you know, that the fight is getting real. Um I remember the first time that I rolled in the gym with a black belt in jiu-jitsu. And if you've done jiu-jitsu before, you know, you will feel like a beach whale on the ground. You're absolutely just useless. And when you roll with the black belt, they just they just it's like so fluent and natural that they'll just wrap you up and do it so effortlessly and make you look so foolish that you will just like be, you would just think you're you're a beach whale. And I remember fighting this guy, and I was literally trying to win. Okay, I'm a brand new in the gym, and I'm trying to beat this guy. And he's way smaller than me, he's probably 10 kilos at least, larger than me, and I am trying to dominate him. Alright? And it's not happening for me. He takes my back, and basically there's a lot of flopping around on the ground, and he's just smiling, just talking in my ear, as he's just choking me out lots of different ways and bending my limbs in ways they shouldn't go, and you know, just taking control of me. And then I sit down after with him, and we're sitting on the mats, and I and I'm I am so destroyed, I am wrecked. And he says to me these words in a very confident but humble voice. He says, Stop trying to beat me because you won't. He wasn't like bragging, he was just telling me the reality. He said, Why don't you try and work with me and I'll help you? I felt so stupid when he said that, that he was just, he was right. He was he was like, You're trying to beat me when you should be trying to work with me. And I was like, I had this revelation of this is so often what I'm trying to do with God. I'm in a wrestle like Jacob with God, I'm trying to beat him, and yet all God wants to do is to bless me. God's waiting for us to get to the end of my fighting so that he can bless me. He so wants to bless me, but I'm so trying to win. My frustration is driving my relationship with God. And God doesn't get angry about it, he invites it, he says, Bring me all your frustrations. You're not going to win, you're not going to beat me. But please come, and when you're done, there will be a blessing waiting for you. I wonder how many of the people here, though, if you're honest about your own life, is that you've taken your wrestle everywhere else except for to God. You're wrestling everyone else. See a lot of young men like this. They're wrestling the whole world except for God. Have you ever wrestled with God for real in your life? What happens when you wrestle? Number one, you get close. You get really close when you wrestle with God. You have to be close to wrestle someone. You get real close. Come on, God. Enough playing around, we're gonna get serious about this. These frustrations in my heart, these angst in my heart, this um uh anxiety, this um wanting to control the world, this frustration that thing is not as they should be. I'm it's time to get serious with you about it. I'm gonna go with you and I'm gonna wrestle you all night, and I'm not gonna leave until I get a blessing. I'm not gonna leave until you speak to me. Ever done something like that? Because that could be the invitation for some of you. So you get close. Number two is you you learn the movements. You learn how someone moves. When you grapple with someone, you really learn their how their body moves. We have this kind of thing in, you know, my daughter's like, she's not here, she's about 10, but we always said this when as they're growing up. If anyone ever wants to date my daughter, the first thing they're gonna do is they're gonna roll on the mats with my son. Okay? And if they can do that well, then then maybe that's okay. But you will learn a lot about somebody on the mats. How they grapple, you will learn a lot about someone, how they struggle, how they grapple, how they overcome, how they dig into God in prayer, how they fight for their calling. You will learn a lot at when people are at the bottom. It's important. You learn, you'll even learn God's breath. You'll learn someone's breath. I remember I used to train with this Russian guy who um actually came to faith last year, one of my really good friends, another black belt in jiu-jitsu, and he used to say to me all the time, he used to say to me, Luke, breathe, Luke, breathe, Luke, breathe. You're gonna pass out. Luke, breathe. Have you ever done weightlifting prayers before? God, and and he's just breathe, breathe. I feel like saying to some people like that in prayer, breathe, you'll pass out. You'll learn God's way of breathing, how he moves. You'll also learn how to surrender without being passive. That's one of the great things about training Jiu Jitsu, is you this is not a message about jiu-jitsu, by the way, but this is just a good analogy. Um, you will learn how to surrender without being apathetic. Sometimes you you've got to tap. God's got you, and you've got to surrender. Some people hear you need to learn how to surrender to God. God's got you. You've been running away too long, and it's time to surrender. That's not apathy, that's faith. God, I'm gonna finally put all of my trust in you. I give you my whole life. God's waiting for you for that moment for some people. He also gets renamed in this fight. He goes from being the deceiver to being father of a nation. That's a pretty good renaming. I wonder how God would like to rename you. Maybe society has put a name on you. Maybe your family history has put a name on you. Okay, maybe your past has put a name on you, and God would like to rename your life. I used to be someone who was addicted. Now God wants to put me, He wants to put a new name on me of overcomer. You're an overcomer. You're not who you used to be. Some of you need to come to grips with I am not who I used to be anymore. Stop living like how I used to be, because I'm not who I used to be. Step into a new identity, step into a new calling. Some of you used to get value from how close you were to people who were cool or had influence. That's who you used to be. Now you have a new identity as a child of God. Your value comes from that. You gotta get, and the way that you young people, the way that you get really confident is to get really serious about wrestling with God. God will show you who you are in the middle of wrestling with Him. I remember being 16 years old, Romans chapter 8 on the wall, outside of my bedroom, craziness going on in my house. Always a drama, always fighting, always violence, and inside my bedroom, being on the on my knees in my bedroom with a worship tape, you know, those worship um CDs where if you if you hit the floor, they would skip and bounce. Remember that? Some of you don't remember that. Fine. It's coming, it'll come back, don't worry. About 20 years, it'll be back. And and I remember saying, calling out to God and being so desperate of a change in my life. So desperate to not continue the Kennedy traditions of the past. There's a famous saying, Kennedys die young, right? I get a buck that trend. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I get a that is not my future. That's that has been the past of the Kennedys, but it is no longer. I'm holding on to a new identity. Are you with me? What's God saying to you right now? Maybe you should just reflect on it and not let it skip by. What is God saying to you? What needs to fall off your identity that you've been holding on to? And God is inviting you to something different. After you meet with God, you're gonna walk differently. For the rest of his life, Jacob had a limp. I want a limp, guys. I want a limp. I want, I remember saying in my I remember coming to church and hearing everyone's stories and hearing miracle stories and going, that's so good, but I'm so sick of hearing everyone else's stories. I want a story. I want to know God myself for real. Youth Camp, classic story. I'm at Youth Camp, 16 years old, I'm down the front, the session's long finished, they're playing CD, I think it's Planet Shakers, way back in the day. Send me, I will go. Anyone ringing any bells? All the millennials are feeling it, okay. I'm down the front on my knees, and I'm praying. I'm praying. All my friends have as the session's long gone. There's just me in this little chapel. The CD's still going. I'm down the front. I'm sitting on my knees with God. And I'm saying, God, and I'm singing the words, but it's the words have gotten deep in my heart. Send me. And I I see a vision so clear, I can still see it right now, and a vision, and I can see the words, and I can feel the words. And the words say, Build a church for the next generation. And I can feel these words, and I had not heard those words before, and I wrote them in my school jar and school diary, my year 11 school diary. And I couldn't get them out of my mind. It was like fire in my heart. I went back to church the next day, and my senior pastor got up in front of everyone in the church, everyone was crying, and I didn't know why. And he said, We're moving to Japan and we're gonna go build a church for the next generation. And I said, I'm going. And we have followed God with a just an unabandoned, extreme yes to the call of God for the rest of our lives. And that happened on that floor in that chapel that day with God, me wrestling and saying, God, I'm not leaving this place until you speak to me. I gotta know you. And maybe that's some of the invitation for some of us here today. Not to come to a nice church that has a really great vibe and aesthetic, and with people are like friendly and cool and like really socially dialed in, not weird. That's surely, fam, there's got to be more to it than that. Where we really know God for real. I want to know God, and that's my invitation to you. Have you ever really wrestled with God for real? And it's not some of you are in your mind, you're asking the question, well, how do I do it? It's the wrong question. It doesn't matter how, it just matters that you show up and saying, I'm not leaving until God does something. You ever prayed all night until God speaks to you? Ever prayed over your kids until you had a breakthrough? Ever felt that? Or maybe in wrestled with a call that seems too big, or a problem that seems too big, and wrestled with God all night, God will meet you in the middle of that. I can tell you that. He will meet you. Amen. One amen. God bless you, sir. Thank you. Amen. We don't do lots of amens, but amen. I think that's an amen. I want to pray for us in a minute. Um, and and I want to invite us into a radical yes to God. Um some of you are fluent in the language of social media, and you need to get fluent in the language of the spirit. You need to get fluent in the language of how God speaks. That's so much more valuable, guys. It's cold. If you can hear from God, you can get through anything. Anything that you can hear from God. He will speak to you. Um so I'm gonna pray. Okay. Would you like to learn how to wrestle with God for real in your life? Okay, we're gonna uh respond. Join me in? Are we ready? Are you encouraged? Okay. Good. Um, we're gonna take communion. We're gonna do a little bit different. I don't know if this is gonna work or not, to be fair, but I'm hoping it's gonna be alright. Um, what we're gonna do is in a moment we're gonna stand and I'm gonna ask everyone to respond, okay? Everyone, the whole room to respond. Okay, because I think my feeling is it's very easy to come and sit in a church and walk out and do that week after week and not really respond. And um there's power in responding. There is power in it. Get up out of your chair and say, yeah, God, I'm taking a step of faith. Just like I'm taking a step of faith with my body, it's like spiritually I'm also taking a step of faith. So we're gonna take communion, but I'm gonna do it up here so you can get out of your chair and come and take communion. But also, some of you need to come and get prayed over because there's stuff in your life that's holding you back, and you just you just you there's a there's a desperation in your heart to get out of it, to get to get rid of it. And you need someone to stand with you and pray. So, can I ask the prayer, prayer, guys? Would you come? Could you come? Would you come and stand with me if you're gonna pray with me, Timmy? And now it's the gang. Christine's gonna come. Would you guys come? If you're part of the core team, would you come? Yeah, just please come. That would be great. Come and pray. Okay, and if you don't know Jesus here today, and you would like someone to stand with you and just pray with you, maybe for the first time, to receive Jesus or come back to Jesus, we'd also like to stand with you and pray with you. Okay? Because don't worry, everyone's gonna respond. Alright? Just come and stand right at the front here, guys. That would be great. Just all the way across here. So you could come and take communion, and then someone could pray for you. You could come take communion and just wait on God. Um, yeah, a moment of responding. Is this okay? Are we gonna be okay? Yeah, let's stand. Alright. Thank you, Lord. Alright, so I'm gonna pray, and then from this side, why don't we just start coming? Thank you, Lord. Open your hands to God. Come, Holy Spirit, God, we need you, and we want you, God. We want you. We need you, Lord. Come, come, Holy Spirit, fill us, God, we bring you all of those that angst, God, of the in between. We bring it to you. Come and lead us.

unknown 31:06

Thank you, Lord.